


Nighttime on the Satellite of Love

by burglebezzlement



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Crisis of confidence, F/M, Late at Night, Megalomania, Moon 13, Yuletide Treat, the wedding that wasn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-22 13:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: When Kinga suffers a setback, Jonah can't resist trying to help her feel better.





	Nighttime on the Satellite of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackEyedGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/gifts).



Nighttime on the Satellite of Love.

It might be Jonah’s favorite time of day. The bots are tucked into their charging cradles, running their programs on half-cycles while they build up their snark levels for another day. Crow’s arms move around as he dreams.

Jonah wonders what Crow is dreaming about. World domination? Escaping the Satellite of Love?

Crow’s arms move again, and Jonah smiles. Maybe he’s chasing rabbits.

Even the Mads are usually asleep by now. During the day, the communicating tube carries the faint sounds of Max being tortured, or the Skeleton Crew vacuuming, or terrifying KingaChrome experiments Jonah doesn’t want to think about. But at night, the sounds from Moon 13 are replaced by Kinga’s thunder generator, lulling them to sleep, and the soft, buzzsaw-like throb of Max’s snores.

Jonah’s just finished brushing his teeth and changing into his night-time jumpsuit jammies when he realizes that he doesn’t hear Max’s snoring.

He goes to the tube and listens. He doesn’t hear Kinga’s thunder generator, either.

Instead, he hears a soft, gulping sound. Almost like someone down there is crying.

“Hello?” Jonah calls. “Are you okay?”

The gulping sound vanishes, and then the light on the table flashes. Moon 13 is calling.

Jonah hits the button. On the screen, Kinga’s wearing a blood-red robe-y thing, dripping with black lace, over a matching blood-red tank top-y thing. Her hair is down, tumbling softly over her shoulders. She looks angry. She looks vulnerable. She looks….

“What is it, Heston?” she snaps. “I’m running a very important experiment.”

Jonah squints. He can’t tell if her eyes are red, or if it’s just the light. “Were you crying?”

Kinga draws herself up. “I most certainly was not.”

“It’s okay if you were,” Jonah says. 

“I told you I wasn’t.” Kinga’s words are curt. “What did you want, Heston?”

He’s not sure. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Kinga’s silent, like she’s poised at the top of a precipice, unsure if she wants to leap. And then she sighs.

“If you must know, I’m having a difficult night. I just heard that Disney has decided to pass on the newest version of Kingachrome.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonah says, trying to sound sympathetic instead of delighted that the rest of the world won’t have to suffer the way he and the bots do. “That must be hard.”

“It is.”

“That robe-y thing looks comfy,” Jonah says.

“It was a gift for our wedding.” Kinga glares at him. “You have to rub it in, do you? That I failed even to create a simple Cynical Ratings Grab Wedding and pull it off without a hitch?”

“Hey, hey!” Jonah puts his hands up. “I didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.” 

“If that dino-mech hadn’t intervened, I could have pulled it off.”

“Of course you could have.”

He hadn’t known that she had kept the wedding gifts. He wonders if his Aunt Cindy sent her traditional macrame wedding afghan, and if Kinga would agree to send it up to him if he asked. The Satellite of Love gets cold sometimes.

Kinga’s glare softens, slightly. “Fine. Yes. It is comfortable. The silk of the Andean death-spider is one of the softest fibers in the world.”

“Maybe you could go torture Max a little,” Jonah suggests. “You know that always cheers you up.”

“Max.” Kinga’s glare is back. “Max is at a convention with Synthia. He’s a featured speaker at this year’s Annual Second Banana Conference.” She looks away from the camera. “Even my henchman is finding more success than I am.”

“Oh, hey now.” Jonah leans forward. “A second banana is only as successful as the first banana he serves. You know that.”

“I guess,” Kinga says.

“And I’m sure you can find another buyer for Kingachrome. Have you considered CBS All Access?”

“I don’t want to consider CBS All Access!”

“Maybe YouTube Red?”

“I want Disney,” Kinga says, and her glare seems like she’s almost back to her old self. “I want Disney, Heston, and I will _have_ Disney, even if I have to take over every Disney theme park with robot dinosaurs to do it. Nobody keeps Kinga Forrester down.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“I’m stripping it back,” Kinga says, lacing her fingers together in a classic Mad pose. “I’m going back to basics. I’m re-inventing the reinvention of Kingachrome, and it starts right here. Tonight.”

“Sounds like a plan!”

“And then the entire world is going to feel the power of Kingachrome. The entire world, Heston!”

“Great,” Jonah says, less certain now. He doesn’t want Kinga to be sad, but apparently the off-switch for sadness is megalomania. As one of the few people and/or bots able to appreciate the true torture that can be inflicted by bad movies in KingaChrome, he’s not sure if he likes where this is going.

“And I owe it all to you,” Kinga says, leaning in to the camera. Her eyes have gone from soft and dewy to steely and determined. “Jonah Heston, when the press comes to interview me? When they ask whether I ever doubted myself? I will deny this ever happened. But you can read those interviews, and you can tell yourself that you — you helped me rise from the ashes of my failures, like a glorious, burning phoenix.”

“I — Kinga, maybe we should talk about —”

“To the laboratory!” Kinga laughs one of her most Mad-like laughs, and then hits the button to disconnect the call.

Crow coughs behind Jonah. Bots don’t need to cough. Jonah knows that. He’s the one who installed Crow’s upgraded coughing mechanism, just for times like this, when Crow needs to make a point. 

Jonah turns.

Crow tilts his head. “Jonah, what was the rule?”

“Don’t rock the satellite.”

“The other rule.”

“Don’t charge Servo after midnight.”

“I mean the really big rule.”

Jonah hangs his head. “Don’t give the Mads new ideas.”

Crow bangs his hand on the table. “Don’t! Give! The Mads! New! Ideas!”

“She just looked so sad,” Jonah says, even though he knows Crow is right. He’s being held captive by an evil mad scientist. He shouldn’t be rooting for her. Not sometimes. Not ever.

But sometimes when Kinga looks at him, he thinks maybe — if things were different — if he were just a boy, standing in front of the mad scientist who’s holding him hostage, asking her to love him and also to stop torturing him with bad movies —

“Stop it,” Crow says, hitting Jonah on the arm. “Stop it right now.”

“Yeah.” Jonah sighs. “You’re right. Thanks, buddy. I needed that.”

“Can I make Servo into a panini press?”

“Maybe in the morning,” Jonah says. “Night, Crow.”

“Night, Jonah.”

From Moon 13, they hear the faint sounds of Kinga’s thunder generator warming up for the night, and the shrieking of the Skeleton Crew as the next experiment starts. Jonah tucks himself in under his thin blanket and lets himself drift off to sleep. And if he’s dreaming of Kinga — just a little — Crow won’t be able to tell.


End file.
